


The Art of Drowning

by orphan_account



Series: with the ocean in our arms [2]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: 15 years later, Alternate Universe, Angst, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Post CoLS, Prompt Fill, Romance, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:24:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8377294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There is an art to drowning, and like a coward, Alec Lightwood has condemned himself.
A/N: This is a requested sequel to my first fic "Words Unsaid". It's set in the same universe, and some things might be clearer if you if read it, but it doesn't really matter (unless you want more of a backstory).





	

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by the lovely @sunafiction on Tumblr. :D I'm sorry it took so long! 
> 
> Prompt: Alec can't get the last meeting out of his heart, a thorn embedding itself in an old wound. Aching and restless he goes to Magnus' loft late at night, his intention to at least try to communicate so he might breathe again. But the tension is still too thick and heavy between them and their attempt at communicating only leads to sex. Alec leaves in the early morning still having not said what he needs to mend their relationship.
> 
> (For those of you who haven't read the first fic, the situation is canon-divergent starting from the Lost Souls breakup and set fifteen years afterwards.)

 

The voice that crackles through the speaker is scratched and tired from the lack of sleep. Even so, there is a flowing quality to it that smooths down the harsher edges and makes one think of sultry summer nights in open-air ballrooms.

 

“High Warlock of Brooklyn. If you’re that pixie from last week, you’d better have a damned good reason for coming here again.”

 

Alec swallows, and almost backs away. He shouldn’t even be here in the first place, not when it’s the middle of the night and he clearly has no right to visit.

 

“It’s past midnight, and I’m not in the best of moods right now. What do you want?” The speaker crackles again.

 

He forces himself to remember that drowning feeling again, the way his chest ached and how he felt as though he would never breathe again. Then he screws up his courage and speaks quietly. “This is Alec Lightwood. Can I come up?”

 

The silence from the other side, punctuated by only a series of staticky noises, is so ominous that Alec desperately wants to lie and say it’s for Shadowhunter business. But it’s his only chance of seeing Magnus again, a final attempt to explain before the warlock disappears for another fifteen years—by which he could easily be dead, killed on a hunt or buried in the City of Bones—and he won’t stoop to starting it with a lie. He’s told too many of those already.

 

There is still no answer, and he is really starting to regret his decision; but a few seconds later, the intercom wordlessly beeps, granting him entry.

 

It’s not much, and it’s nothing even remotely close to the resolution he had come for—although he hadn’t really expected one so easily anyways—but it is something.

 

The door swings open silently as he steps in. The creaky floorboard that was two steps to the right of the entrance is now gone, replaced by marble tiling and shining polish. A lot has indeed changed in fifteen years. The loft has been redecorated at least once, and now it’s a myriad of heavy browns and rich reds; velvet curtains and mahogany tables that are probably older than Alec himself. He swears the doorway to the kitchen has moved to the left, but maybe that’s just him.

 

Alec takes the one seraph blade he has on him and begins to set it down on the little side table behind the couch, the way he is used to doing, before realizing that he probably isn’t welcome to do so anymore. He shoves it back into his gear, and sits down carefully in an armchair instead. Magnus must be finishing up business in the other room.

 

The warlock in question appears a few heartbeats later, sliding into a soft-looking white jacket, the single ring on his right hand glimmering dully. He’s not wearing any makeup, Alec notices.

 

His eyes flicker to Alec’s for a split second before realizing what he’s looking at. Almost hastily, he passes a hand over his face until there’s layers of eyeliner and contouring—and a business-transaction smile—on it.

 

“And what can I do for the New York Institute, Alexander?” Without missing a beat, Magnus sits down in a plush loveseat across from where Alec is standing.

 

“It’s not for the Institute,” he says, surprised at how calm his voice is. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

 

Magnus raises an eyebrow, fingering the piercing in his eye delicately. “About?” The calculated tone of voice he uses is accompanied by a subtle shift in his eyes, but the meaning couldn’t be clearer if he had shouted it. He’d rather avoid this topic.

 

Alec takes a breath. “We ended… rather badly fifteen years ago. I just came here to see if—” His voice trails off, because even to his own ears, the explanation sounds childish; something a petty teenager would say.

 

“Alexander,” Magnus starts to say, and Alec knows whatever is going to come out of his mouth will not be pretty, so he instinctively puts a finger to Magnus’ lips.

 

The warlock immediately stills (he hadn’t noticed the constant, tiny movements that Magnus was making, but their absence rings hollow) and Alec takes a step back; or would have, if he hadn’t felt the hand on his shoulder, just brushing the edge of the bone with two fingers.

 

“Stop.” It might have come out as an order in any other situation, but right now, Magnus’ voice is hoarse and the question mark behind it palpable.

 

Alec stops.

 

It’s happening too fast. It feels as though he’s just entered the loft; they’re practically strangers now, with fifteen years of distance between them.

 

But—

 

He knows that they’re now standing far too close to keep up the _just strangers_ pretense any longer, too close to think of anything but the unspoken words lying in this very room. He still stops, all the same. Doesn’t move back. Doesn’t do anything more than blink, slowly and carefully as light and shadow dance around the man in front of him.

 

“We shouldn’t.” The words are a jarring shift back into reality, a startling contrast to the dreamlike softness of the moment before.

 

Just for a second, Alec indulges in thinking about what might have happened if something had been different. If the thread that had snapped when there was still a _they_ to speak of had repaired itself. If they had gotten a second chance.

 

All of that makes its way out in a small voice, something desperate and rough and all too helpless. “Magnus, please.” He knows that this is not what he came for, nor what he needs right now; but he won’t leave it unvoiced again. “You can’t just back away now.”

 

It feels as though a match dropped in the gasoline-soaked ocean he’s drowning in. On the horizon, a raging inferno blazes to life, fire on water that matches the tension in the loft right now.

 

Black, heavy dread seeps its way in, crawling over Alec’s toes and feet and clawing his ribcage. He shouldn’t have come.

 

Magnus’ expression is unreadable in the dim lights, and all of a sudden, in what might be a single moment of weakness, it’s their first kiss again. Hurried and exploring and frantic with hands at waists and heads tilting back, mouths opening against each other. There is a fierceness there, a special kind of desperation that is reserved for those who love as intensely as they do.

 

When it’s over, Magnus looks as if he’d been caught in a hurricane; Alec can’t imagine he looks much better. “I—I can’t be here.” The words come right out of his mouth, because he doesn’t have anything better to say, even though he’s the one who initiated this.

 

Magnus’ expression flattens out. “Of course,” he says. “Go back to your Institute, go back and act as if nothing happened.” His tone is not bitter, although it has every right to be, just resigned. It somehow makes everything worse.

 

And Alec explodes. “I’m thirty-five, Magnus! I have responsibilities and a life and priorities. None of these things have included you in over a decade.” The last statement is said sharply and drops the temperature of the room considerably.

 

“Then why don’t you just go, Alec?” Magnus sounds frustrated for the first time, mimicking the way that Alec had spoken his name. “If you came here thinking that—”

 

“I don’t know what I was thinking, okay?” Alec says, composure lost. “You really don’t have a claim over me anymore. Don’t act as if you know me.”

 

After a heartbeat, they both back away instinctively at the same time, and Alec tries to breathe again. Whatever this visit was supposed to accomplish, it wasn’t this. Forcing his voice to soften, he says, “I’ll leave if you ask me to.”

 

Magnus’ voice is marginally more collected when he speaks again. “Why don’t you stay the night until we can sort this out properly? It’s late. You wanted to talk.”

 

Alec flinches at the forced casualness in his tone, but he understands anyway.

 

It’s not just a simple gesture, it’s a plea. _Stay the night, just one last time._

 

And what then, he wonders. _What then, indeed?_

 

The look in Magnus’ eyes is enough to answer the question. (Angel, he seems to have so many of those nowadays.) _Then nothing. Did you expect more?_

 

 _No, but it still hurts._ Alec turns away. He’s already drowning; in too deep, sinking too fast. It won’t matter if more water comes rushing in. It’s just a matter of time before it destroys him. And maybe that’s why he says yes, but maybe it’s just that selfish part of his brain that recognizes that after this, Magnus will be completely and utterly off-limits. _Then nothing. Did you expect more?_ It echoes dully in his head.

 

Maybe it’s just that Alec wants to kiss him one last time.

 

“I’ll stay.”

 

* * *

 

It’s fifteen years of silence and tension, all pent up and suddenly released. It’s words unsaid and choices not taken, two paths diverging at one critical moment and everything between them until that one moment.

 

Alec’s not sure which way is up anymore. Maybe he’s just plunged in deeper.

 

* * *

 

 

They don’t talk, at least not in the way that they intended to.

 

* * *

 

The night ticks away the minutes, seconds, hours, and Alec numbers them to his own heartbeats. _One, two, three, four._ After a while, he realizes what he’s doing. He’s counting the moments he has left with Magnus before that inevitably cruel dawn arrives. _Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen_. Now, the numbers speak of leaving.

 

_Twenty._

 

His heart pounds. The count quickens.

 

_Thirty._

 

Magnus shifts beside him.

 

_Forty._

 

The angle of the moonlight shifts ever so slightly. He remembers cat eyes on a night like this.

 

* * *

 

And still the stars shine on relentlessly, coldly, unseeing of the two men beneath it, choking on their own words as they scrabble for the surface of the water they had thrown themselves in.

 

* * *

 

The light of the dawn is very pale gray, and it's not bright or beautiful, as dawn has been so often described as. If anything, it signifies a rainstorm; how fitting, Alec thinks bitterly. A rainstorm. The curtains are halfway open, a rare occurrence in his experience, but then, who is he to judge how Magnus' sleeping habits have changed? He thinks about what happened last night, and expects his heart to break, but it seems as though there is nothing left to break. It merely manages a faint tremor; and that's it.

 

He knows Magnus is sleeping on the other side of the bed—too far away to properly sense that he's there, but too close to ignore anything that had happened between them—but Alec studiously shuts out that thought. It was just one night.

 

"Don't leave yet. One more night." Magnus' voice whispers through his head as flashes of the night come through. "Just one night." It sounds pleading, in his own mind, but he can still remember how the warlock had said it, and it was just broken.

 

How ironic, Alec thinks. The two of them, lying broken and bleeding, shards of glass and razor-edged arrowheads between, too foolish to call for help, too prideful to reach out to each other. They are both drowning fast, and they refuse to pull the other out.

 

Alec closes his eyes briefly. The weight of his responsibility suddenly presses down, urgently, onto him, and he can't breathe.

 

I'm drowning.

 

I'm drowning.

 

I'm drowning.

 

_Breathe, Alexander._

 

He pushes away that voice, fingers digging into palms and palms pressing into closed eyelids. The Institute. The Clave. Isabelle, whom he hadn't called to check on yet, after her patrol shift. The meeting that would take place tomorrow. The injured in the infirmary.

 

He can't afford this luxury right now, if it can even be called a luxury. He has to think about the Institute that he is in charge of, and the people he loves. Magnus Bane has no place in his life anymore; they are finished. A mere once upon a time story, the kind that will inevitably end in a tragedy.

 

And if word ever got out that the head of the New York Enclave was seeing the High Warlock of Brooklyn... Once upon a time, a decade and a half ago, he hadn't been Enclave leader or a prominent figure in Downworlder-Shadowhunter alliances. Despite the Clave’s loosening of rules in the past ten years, there would be consequences to face, in the form of investigations and summons to Idris and threats on the Institute.

 

He forces himself to remember that, remember Jace-and-Isabelle-and-Clary-and-the-Institute, and the way they had parted—a mistake and a shattering and a cold, unforgiving stare.

 

Sometimes, all the best effort in the world leads only to heartbreak.

 

So Alec swings off the bed, and gives himself one minute of weakness. One minute where he is allowed to think about anything, although it’s mostly just blankness at this point; then he gathers his shoes and socks and walks out of the bedroom.

 

He doesn’t look back, doesn’t allow himself as much as a glimpse of the man he loved (loves still, maybe, he wouldn’t know the difference anymore).

 

Only when he is inside the sparse Institute garden, barren for the coming winter, does he allow himself to break down completely.

 

And strangely enough, the thing that tips him past the breaking point is that he has left his jacket in there. Of all things, of all the small details to overlook.

 

He wonders what Magnus might do with it, now that it has been made clear that they are over and done with.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There is an art to drowning, and like a coward, Alec Lightwood has condemned himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Hm, to be honest, I felt pretty meh about this oneshot at first because I was so concerned about the characterization, but after some intensive editing and complaining to my friends, it turned out a bit better. I still think there's something missing with the characters (and I really cannot write 35-yo Alec for the life of me) so if anyone has some feedback, I'd appreciate it! 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr [@moonlightandashes](http://moonlightandashes.tumblr.com/)and on FF.net (where I update more frequently) also as [Moonlight and Ashes](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7168303/). Feel free to leave a prompt at either of those places. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! xx Minerva


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